The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon. It is believed that wastewater treatment and water reclamation are becoming increasingly important aspects of urban, suburban, and rural planning and residential, commercial, and institutional development. As population densities increase and housing developments spread in many areas, existing processing capacity provided by municipal treatment systems in these areas may become strained. In some cases, limits on municipal processing capacity may restrict or deter new residential, commercial, and institutional development projects or urban, suburban, and rural growth. Moreover, one can expect that providing and maintaining clean water resources may also become increasingly important given the demands that growing populations may place on existing fresh water supplies.
In an effort to reduce the strain on municipal wastewater processing facilities and simultaneously address water shortages, it may be advantageous to reclaim wastewater on-site at a residential, commercial, and institutional level. In some cases, wastewater produced by a residential, commercial, and institutional household can be reclaimed and processed for use in irrigation, flushing toilets, or other applications that may not require purified drinking water. One can expect that reclaiming even a modest percentage of wastewater for reuse may result in a significant impact on the availability of fresh water resources. It is believed that decentralized, on-site systems can be used to capture, process, and reuse wastewater without an expensive municipal sewage infrastructure or a centralized water treatment facility. Additionally, due to the ability to operate without existing infrastructure, decentralized, on-site systems may be incrementally added to areas to help provide increased wastewater treatment capacity, typically without requiring a significant capital investment.
By way of educational background, an aspect of the prior art generally useful to be aware of is that a currently available alternative to municipal wastewater treatment systems is to use a residential, commercial, and institutional septic tank system. Traditional septic tank systems generally have one or more large chambers or tanks for receiving an input flow of wastewater. In some traditional septic tank systems, the wastewater is delivered to a large chamber or cavity that allows the wastewater to circulate freely. In these systems, a surge in the input flow may cause turbulent currents in the chamber, which may create dead zones where wastewater does not flow properly and may impair processing of the wastewater. These internal currents may also disrupt settled solids, which may hinder the wastewater processing. Furthermore, it is believed that the wastewater treated in traditional systems may not spend a consistent amount of time in an input chamber depending on multiple variable factors, including the liquid level in the chamber, the flow rate of the wastewater input, and internal currents that may develop in the chamber. For example, a sudden surge of wastewater delivered into a chamber that is nearly full may cause a portion of the wastewater near the top of the chamber to be purged too soon. Additionally, portions of wastewater near the bottom of the chamber or located in dead zones may be unaffected by the input flow and remain in the chamber too long. Due to these effects, one can expect that normal variations or surges in the input flow may lead to inconsistent processing and/or inefficiencies in traditional septic tank systems. Furthermore, baffling schemes of current septic tanks typically have a very short hydraulic and indeterminate flow path, reducing settling detention time and often preventing extended periods of contact between the microbes and the nutrients in the tank chambers, which aid in the breakdown of waste material.
In view of the foregoing, it is clear that these traditional techniques are not perfect and leave room for more optimal approaches.
Unless otherwise indicated illustrations in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale.